AbstractHistoryArchive Description

A character-based television drama series about the lives of police officers in the fictitious Australian country town of Mt Thomas, this series began with the arrival of Constable Maggie Doyle (Lisa McCune) to the Mt Thomas station in the episode 'A Woman's Place'. Doyle and avuncular station boss Senior Sergeant Tom Croydon (John Wood) were the core characters of the series until the departure of Lisa McCune.

Immensely popular for a decade, Blue Heelers was cancelled in 2006 after thirteen seasons. The announcement was front-page news in Australia's major newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney's Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun and The Age in Melbourne, and Brisbane's Courier Mail.

On June 8, 2006 Ross Warneke wrote in The Age:

'It's over and, to be perfectly blunt, there's no use lamenting the demise of Blue Heelers any more. When the final movie-length episode aired on Channel Seven on Sunday night, 1.5 million Australians tuned in, a figure that was big enough to give the show a win in its timeslot but nowhere near big enough to pay the sort of tribute that this writer believes Heelers deserved after more than 500 episodes.It is unlikely there will be anything like it again. At almost $500,000 an hour, shows such as Blue Heelers are quickly becoming the dinosaurs of Australian TV.'

Notes

Award-winning and individually published episodes in this series are included on AustLit.

Includes

133 (4.05)

form yReports of Damage and LossJohn Banas,
1997Z13629431997single work film/TV detective crime AbstractNick and Adam attempt to rescue a young girl from a flooded stormwater drain. Nick sends Adam for help while he holds the girl to stop her from being dragged away. However, Adam is delayed by a crisis involving the girl's sister and, worn down by exhaustion, Nick loses his grip on the girl.
This episode is revealed in flashbacks when Nick and Adam return to the station and their colleagues piece together the story. Nick vents his frustration on Adam. Eventually the news comes in that one of the sisters lived and the other died. Nick and Adam start the healing process by going to inform the parents of their child's death. Source: Australian Television Information Archive1997

Related Works

yBlue Heelers : Maggie's StoryRoger Dunn,
Sydney:Hodder Headline,1997Z8142491997single work novel AbstractWitchery is afoot in Widgeree and Constable Maggie Doyle is in the thick of it. Her passionate love affair with the charismatic Professor Kellerman has got PJ Hasham's back up, but they put aside their differences. With their trademark warmth, humour and skill the Blue heelers team must go to the heart of some dark secrets.Source: Trove

yScreenwriters Talk About Their Craft : Tony MorphettSusan Lever
(interviewer),
National Film and Sound Archive,2012Z18680192012single work interview Abstract'Tony Morphett discusses the origins of Blue Heelers (1994- ), Water Rats (1996- ), and names Rain Shadow (2008, co-written with Jimmy Thomson) as one of his finest achievements.'Source: NFSA clip description

Southern Stars and Secret Lives : International Exchange in Australian TelevisionIan Craven,
2008single work criticism — Appears in:
Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies,vol.
22no.
12008;(p. 51-67)Abstract'The Secret Life of Us is a 'high end' television drama series, defined by 'adult themes, sexual references and low-level coarse language', first screened in Australia and the United Kingdom in mid-2001, and surviving for four seasons until late 2005.
Developed by Southern Star, with the Ten Network, and Optus Television
(a US-based pay TV service), it was the first Australian drama series to
be commissioned by the United Kingdom's Channel 4. Eighty-six episodes
were screened prior to cancellation. At the peak of its popularity, the
series had been sold into a dozen or so (mostly European) territories,
and against the usual odds, secured airtime in the United States, where
it was picked up by Trio, a small west-coast cable network. It gained
positive critical recognition, and fared well at television markets
worldwide.
Back in Australia, commentators linked the show with the return of the
Ten Network to 'credible' drama after a hiatus of two decades (Sams 2001, 37), and with the emergence of a 'sophisticated and quirky' youth sub-genre (Idato 2000,
2), before enthusiasm cooled around series two and three, and series
four drew the by now largely neglected narrative to its almost unnoticed
conclusion.
The project offers a suggestive case study of momentary trends in
domestic drama production, within material received as confidently
articulating Australia's globalizing television culture at the
millennium, inviting exploration of what John Hartley (1992, 102) has
seen as the fundamental 'impurity' of national television, and the
productivity of its identification as a 'fundamental criterion for
cultural studies'.' (Author's introduction p. 51)

Southern Stars and Secret Lives : International Exchange in Australian TelevisionIan Craven,
2008single work criticism — Appears in:
Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies,vol.
22no.
12008;(p. 51-67)Abstract'The Secret Life of Us is a 'high end' television drama series, defined by 'adult themes, sexual references and low-level coarse language', first screened in Australia and the United Kingdom in mid-2001, and surviving for four seasons until late 2005.
Developed by Southern Star, with the Ten Network, and Optus Television
(a US-based pay TV service), it was the first Australian drama series to
be commissioned by the United Kingdom's Channel 4. Eighty-six episodes
were screened prior to cancellation. At the peak of its popularity, the
series had been sold into a dozen or so (mostly European) territories,
and against the usual odds, secured airtime in the United States, where
it was picked up by Trio, a small west-coast cable network. It gained
positive critical recognition, and fared well at television markets
worldwide.
Back in Australia, commentators linked the show with the return of the
Ten Network to 'credible' drama after a hiatus of two decades (Sams 2001, 37), and with the emergence of a 'sophisticated and quirky' youth sub-genre (Idato 2000,
2), before enthusiasm cooled around series two and three, and series
four drew the by now largely neglected narrative to its almost unnoticed
conclusion.
The project offers a suggestive case study of momentary trends in
domestic drama production, within material received as confidently
articulating Australia's globalizing television culture at the
millennium, inviting exploration of what John Hartley (1992, 102) has
seen as the fundamental 'impurity' of national television, and the
productivity of its identification as a 'fundamental criterion for
cultural studies'.' (Author's introduction p. 51)

yScreenwriters Talk About Their Craft : Tony MorphettSusan Lever
(interviewer),
National Film and Sound Archive,2012Z18680192012single work interview Abstract'Tony Morphett discusses the origins of Blue Heelers (1994- ), Water Rats (1996- ), and names Rain Shadow (2008, co-written with Jimmy Thomson) as one of his finest achievements.'Source: NFSA clip description